Economic data at your fingertips with mobile apps

If you need some quick data on the economy to win an argument, write a report or make an investment, you might want to check out the economy apps available for mobile phones and tablets.

They're not for everybody, but students, journalists, financial analysts, politicians and investors should find them useful.

Andreas Calianos, chief investment officer at a New York-based real estate investment company, said that he reaches for his mobile phone when the discussion around the conference table turns to the economy, and fires up an app called Economy.

"The last time I did it, I pulled up the home-ownership rate," Calianos said. "People go 'Oh, this guy has the facts at hand.' "

Economy, from Cascade Software in Seattle, provides all sorts of state and national data in a simple, easily negotiated format.

For example, you can use it to find California's gross domestic product (GDP), its health insurance coverage rate, housing starts for single-family homes, per capita personal income and the average hourly wage ($25.47).

Economy also has a feature that lets you overlay Democratic and Republican presidencies and recessions on line graphs tracking various data. That's handy if you want to shore up your side in a debate over whether the economy does better under Democratic or Republican presidents.

Another app, America's Economy, produced by the U.S. Census Bureau, also puts some economic indicators at your fingertips, along with a calendar showing when key economic reports will be released.

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In a jiffy, you learn that the nation's unemployment rate was 6.6 percent as of January, down 0.1 percent. And if you want to know more, a link to the Bureau of Labor Statistics is provided on the page. That link jumps to the BLS press release, which contains detailed figures on things like the labor force participation rate and the number of long-term unemployed.

The apps are not aimed at professional economists, who are more likely to be buried behind massive spread sheets at their workstation than checking their mobile phones, but Stephen Levy of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto, said he has a couple of them on his iPad.

"To be frank, I don't use them," he said. "But for a regular non-technical user, I think it's easier than having to traverse the Bureau of Economic Analysis website or the Bureau of Labor Statistics website."

A data-rich app is FRED -- short for Federal Reserve Economic Data. It is created and maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, which says FRED is "a useful tool for reporters, students and policy makers alike -- anyone who has a need to analyze and disseminate economic data on the web or in print."

FRED tracks thousands of economic indicators over time from 59 national, international, public and private sources.

The Census Bureau recently introduced a free app called Dwellr, which matches census statistics with your chosen location. It's good for learning more about your community, or one you might be thinking of visiting or moving to, the bureau says. After entering some personal criteria, including gender, occupation, marital and family status and where I live, Dwellr churned for a few seconds and returned a list of cities I might like.

A shortcoming of these apps is that once you've got some data, you're often going to need someone to interpret it for you. That requires an economist, unless you prefer getting your analysis from a politician.

"There are millions of numbers out there," said Chris Thornberg of Beacon Economics. "The vast majority of people have to have context to understand these numbers. You have be able to look at them and study and analyze them."

For that, you might turn to Moody's Analytics' Dismal Scientist. It provides real-time coverage of more than 300 economic indicators for the U.S. and Canada, Europe, Asia and the Pacific and Latin America.

An abstract by an analyst is produced within 15 minutes of the release of the latest data. You can sort by region, look at only today's data releases, or search for past releases. A subscription version contains comprehensive reports available to clients, such as forecast tables, podcasts covering outlooks and employment, a search function and filtering by time, geography, and other parameters.

If you want to improve your economic "language skills," there are quite a few dictionaries of economic terms available. One is Economics &Finance, an e-book of economic terms and more that was updated on March 2.